So I’m not gonna lie: bangs are tricky. Or at least they are on my hair: as I suspected would happen, I wake up looking far more like Alfalfa than Audrey. Kendrick thinks this is funny (I disagree).
But what Karmela told me when I was getting them cut is true: if you can manage to make your bangs look decent, that’s really all you need to do with your hair – if you’re in a hurry you can just twist the rest up onto the top of your head and look respectably done. And while at John Sahag Workshop last weekend, I learned how to do just that (the results of my tutorial are pictured above).
HOW-TO: BLOW-DRY PERFECT BANGS
1. Start with wet hair, and dry your bangs first (counterintuitive maybe, but they get a lot tougher to wrangle if they’re left to their own devices for even a few minutes).
2. First use two fingers to pull them down and slightly out, aiming the blowdryer down the hair shaft.
3. Then use a paddle brush to make the same motion – the pulling with the fingers makes them straight, while the brush gives them just the slightest bend (in other words: volume without veering into poofy ’80s territory).
4. Next, “wrap” the hair, using the paddle brush to push the bangs first to one side, then the other, blow-drying all the while.
5. Repeat these steps until completely dry. The result should be bangs that aren’t too flat and aren’t too curled…bangs, in other words, that are just right.
Now, for product. To give my hair shine I like using Alterna Bamboo Dry Oil Mist, but if you spray a product like that onto bangs there’s the danger that they’ll look oily. What I like to use on the shorter pieces around my face (and now for my bangs) is a little of Kendrick’s hair wax – I rub just the tiniest amount into the ends only, to break them up. But honestly, you know what I do more often than not? After I moisturize my skin, I just twist whatever residue is left on my fingers into the ends, and that does the trick. Easy easy.
